On November 20, 2013 another boxer slipped into a coma and was given minutes - not hours - to live. Magomed Abdusalamov survived but still lies in a hospital gradually regaining movement and function. His near-death was celebrated and applauded by thousands of people at Madison Square Garden in the hours before he collapsed.Make no mistake; this is no better than Roman gladiators fighting to the death. Boxing is a sport in name only, and the purpose of the contest is for one man to beat another into unconsciousness. Knock-outs are celebrated and recounted, and the matches are beamed across the globe to millions of people while sponsors hawk shaving cream or cologne during the commercial breaks. Our society takes men, and now women, from disadvantaged backgrounds and promises them great riches if they will but sacrifice their health and even their lives for the amusement of others.We have laws against dog fights and cock fights, but apparently believe that no one needs protect a poor kid from the projects. Even worse than the boxers and those who exploit them are the people who watch. Boxers know that the bloodiness of the matches is increasing, and television cameras capture it in close ups. According to the Svinth Study in 2011, 103 boxers have died in the ring or shortly after a bout since 2000. We know that the risk of death is immense, and we also know that permanent and irreversible neurological deficit diseases are rampant in the sport. The term "punch drunk has nothing to do with alcohol.Can any decent, right-thinking person not demand that this "sport" be outlawed? There will be those who will try to stay on the gravy train produced by the misery of these men by trying to use equipment to soften blows to the head or avoid death, and that is laudatory but futile. The cost of this savagery to our society is immense and ultimately of even greater cost than the lives and health of those poor devils we have prancing around in the ring for the amusement of the bloodthirsty.Ban Boxing Now - make that your goal in 2014.

Author

L.Craig Williams, BA, JD, has studied history and international law in Germany and the US and written extensively about human resources and individual leadership. He believes that all occupations and intellectual effort should be focused on the betterment of the human condition.